« Cheers? Celebrating Quebec Cinema »
Issue 10, Fall 2008
www.cinema-quebecois.net

Call for Papers
(deadline: June 10, 2008)

If one goes along with the general consensus shared by cultural critics in
the mainstream press, major industry spokespersons and public funding
organizations, it would seem that now, in the wake of the 21st century, the
time has come to celebrate Quebec cinema. The ardent public appetite for
Quebec films seems an established fact, and the revenues and market shares
of local production have experienced, year in and year out, unparalleled
highs in the history of Quebec cinema. To symbolically mark the
publication of its tenth issue, Nouvelles « vues » sur le cinéma québécois
would like to reflect upon the themes/concepts of celebration, euphoria and
the carnivalesque.

Firstly, how is celebration represented in Quebec films? How is the
carnivalesque registered within these films' content, their discourse? How
does the party, the pow-wow and the rumba manifest itself both inside the
theater, as well as beyond it? Does the euphoria surrounding Quebec cinema
require that films released to theaters be more optimistic? Is there still
space for "dark" material in contemporary Quebec cinema?

Furthermore, we would like to interrogate the apparent consensus, both
self-congratulatory and indulgently complacent, that helps to construct the
modus operandi of a cultural industry in which ego and confidence is
measured only in proportion to domestic or international success (either
real or imagined). How does this euphoria translate into reality for
producers, filmmakers, audiences? Is there really a reason to celebrate?
Is there any evidence (economic, cultural, political) supporting the
reverie of this euphoria?

To celebrate its fifth anniversary, Nouvelles « vues » sur le cinéma
québécois invites the community of filmmakers, researchers and critics to
explore multiple definitions and expressions of celebration, as much in the
actual films themselves as within the contexts of their production and
reception.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):
• Excess and the carnivalesque, the aesthetics of;
• Rituals, religion, celebration rites and families: celebrating and
(de)constructing community;
• The nation, the myth and National Day: associations worth revisiting?;
• Celebrations of Quebec cinema: the austere and the flashy (Jutra,
Genies, Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois, galas and festivals, etc.);
• Celebrating Quebec abroad: Quebec cinema honored, really?;
• Local stars, starlettes and the Cannes Film Festival;
• Diversity and stagnancy at film festivals in Montreal;
• Regions and film festivals in Quebec;
• Celebrating identity, celebrating diversity: a culture opening up, or
a remote utopia?;
• Cinema during the holiday season in Quebec;
• Commercial success, popular success, critical success: adequateness,
contradictions and definitions;
• The next day's hang-over: a metaphor for contemporary Quebec?

We invite authors and industry practitioners to submit (by email) original
proposals (approximately 250 words), in English or in French, before June
10, 2008. Final texts must be received by October 15, 2008, at the latest.
 All texts will be read and evaluated by our advisory board for comments
and approval.

Nouvelles « vues » sur le cinéma québécois
c/o Bruno Cornellier
Department of Communication Studies
Concordia University
7141 Sherbrooke W., L-CJ-417.7
Montréal, (Québec)
H4B 1R6, Canada

Email: bcornellier_at_cinema-quebecois.net


-- 
Iain Robert Smith
Institute of Film and Television
School of American and Canadian Studies
University of Nottingham
University Park
NG7 2RD

Head of Communications,
MeCCSA Post-Graduate Network
website: http://www.meccsa.org.uk/pgn/

Articles Editor,
Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies
website: http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/